British Triathlon performance director Brendan Purcell said: “Jess has been unwell, it was touch and go whether she was going to race, so it was good to see her swim and bike well until she had a mechanical problem.”

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Martin Whitmarsh appointed new CEO of Ben Ainslie Racing as former McLaren stalwart aims to win America’s Cup

Martin Whitmarsh, the former McLaren team principal and chief executive of The McLaren Group, was announced as the new CEO of Ben Ainslie Racing, the team founded by Britain’s four-time Olympic gold medallist with the aim of retrieving the America’s Cup and bringing it back to British waters for the first time since the inaugural competition was held off the Isle of Wight in 1851.

Whitmarsh, who will take a seat on the board and report to Ainslie, BAR’s team principal, was recommended to the yachtsman by a number of high-profile figures within motorsport, among them Red Bull’s Christian Horner and Adrian Newey. The latter is already committed to working for BAR as part of a consultancy agreement between the fledgling Portsmouth-based team and Red Bull Advanced Technologies.

Whitmarsh admitted the prospect of working with Formula One’s pre-eminent designer again, after the pair spent nine years together at McLaren between 1997 and 2006, was a key factor behind his decision to join BAR, although he claimed he needed little persuading once he had sat down with Ainslie.

“Ben came to see me at my house a couple of weeks ago and it was an easy sell,” he said. “There were no negotiations. Frankly, within minutes of talking to Ben I knew I wanted to do it. I rang him the next morning to accept.”

Since that meeting, Whitmarsh has been out in Borneo, where his daughter, an anthropologist, is working on a project with orangutans.

It was the last trip in what he describes as a “life-changing” nine months since he walked out of the McLaren Technology Centre for the last time, having been ousted as team principal last January following a lengthy power struggle with Ron Dennis.

Whitmarsh declined to discuss his departure, or even the current goings-on at McLaren (“I’m still too close to it all”) but said he did not regret his decision and would almost certainly never go back.

“It has been good for my soul,” he said of his mid-life gap year. “I mean, you’re the first journalist I have spoken to in 12 months. I’ve been travelling. I’ve been able to spend more time with my kids who are grown up now. My son is a music photographer so I’ve helped him set up a bit. I’ve been out to visit my daughter in Uganda and Rwanda and Borneo, and see what she is doing. I feel quite energised by it all. Formula One is a sport that can take over your life, it can consume you. And I think it got pretty close to doing that with me.

“But I know I’m a lucky, lucky man. I had an amazing 25 years and never have to work again if I don’t want to. Whatever I do now should be because I want to do something fresh.”

That opportunity has arrived, unexpectedly, in the shape of BAR, who will be competing for the 35th America’s Cup in Bermuda in 2017.

Whitmarsh will begin his role next month, just a few weeks before the team move from their temporary offices in Whiteley to a new state-of-the-art facility in Camber Quay.

“That is what I have been brought in to help do. If I look back at my 25 years at McLaren, we developed from a business with fewer than 100 people to over 3000 people, a business that went from £19 million turnover to over £600 million.

Floyd Mayweather says he has never wanted to win a fight more after coming face-to-face with Manny Pacquiao at a press conference.

The pair met in Los Angeles to promote their long-anticipated $300 million mega-fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on May 2.

“Pacquiao is one of the best fighters of the era,” Mayweather said. “I think we couldn’t shoot at a better time.

“I’m in the gym right now working, dedicating myself to my sport and pushing myself to the limit because I have never wanted to win a fight more in my life.

“He wants to win just as the same as I do. One thing I do know about any sport is when you lose once it’s in your mind. When you lose twice, it’s in your mind.

“From day one I was told to push myself to the limit, to be a winner. We tried to make this fight happen in the past but we kept bumping heads about random blood testing. We finally resolved everything.

“May 2, that’s when the world stops. Mayweather-Pacquiao, the biggest fight in boxing history.”

Pacquiao emerged first on to the stage and when Mayweather arrived the pair stood a foot away from each other in a stare-off that lasted a minute.

“This is what the fans have been waiting for since five years,” said Pacquiao. “I came from nothing into something and I owe everything to the Lord.”

Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach was less polite.

“I love challenges and this is the biggest challenge of my life,” Roach said.

“I’ve been looking forward to this fight for a long, long time. We are in the toughest fight of our lives and Floyd is the best fighter in the world, but we’re going to kick his ass.”

It was the only meeting the pair will have before fight week in a showdown to decide boxing’s pound-for-pound No.1 that will make more money than any other fight in history.

American Mayweather, 38, has won world titles in five weight divisions and will take a 47-0 record into the fight against Filipino Pacquiao, 36, who suffered a fifth career defeat in 61 fights when he was knocked out by Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez in 2012.

Southpaw Pacquiao has won world titles in eight divisions and will be putting his WBO belt on the line against Mayweather’s WBA and WBC straps.

Katarina Johnson-Thompson broke Jessica Ennis-Hill’s British record, but fell agonisingly short of the world record as she claimed pentathlon gold at the European Indoor Championships in Prague.

Johnson-Thompson amassed 5,000 points, just falling short of Ukrainian Nataliya Dobrynska’s haul of 5,013, to land the first major title of her career in commanding fashion.

If there were any doubts left that this 22-year-old was destined for greatness they were blown out of the water by a performance of utter domination in her first pentathlon for three years.

“I was gutted, instant regret,” she said. “If someone had said to me, ‘You’ve got 5000 points and a gold medal’, at the beginning of the day I would have taken it, but because everything was going so well and I was so close, I think that’s what made me so sad.

“I could have got it if I had pushed a little bit more. It’s regretful, but its still a good score. It’s just that I accumulated all those points to get to that moment where I could actually achieve it.

“It’s been a long day. I got up at 6 o’clock and we didn’t get much rest. You forget I had a hurdles PB today and that’s great. Just because it all blends into one all I was thinking about was the disappointment of not getting the world record.”

Fired up by last year’s injury frustrations when a stress fracture to her foot ruled her out of the Commonwealth Games and European Championships, and boasting a fearless new attitude, Johnson-Thompson came first in the 60m hurdles, high jump and long jump to finish well clear of the field.

The Liverpool athlete roared to a 60m hurdles personal best of 8.18 seconds – her third PB in the discipline in less than three weeks – before clearing a championship record 1.95m in the high jump and equalling her season’s best of 12.32m in the shot put, by far her weakest event.

She lay second after the first three events, but the long jump, at which she is the British indoor record holder and reigning world indoor silver medallist, offered her the chance to all but guarantee gold and to put the world record within touching distance.

She delivered, leaping out to 6.89m on her first attempt. Needing to clock at least two minutes 11.86 seconds over 800m for the world record, Johnson-Thompson looked on course over the first three laps, but, with legs tiring, drifted off the pace and crossed the line in two minutes 12.78 seconds.

Ennis-Hill’s three-year-old British record of 4,965 points was still consigned to history, though. The Olympic heptathlon champion is due to return to the sport this summer following the birth of her first child.Read more at ESPN

The build-up to Saturday’s race had been dominated by a row with Great Britain team-mate Andy Vernon.

Farah claimed Vernon had questioned his nationality after the double Olympic champion won European 10,000m gold in 2014, with Vernon describing that as a “huge, huge misrepresentation”.

The bad feeling clearly did not upset Farah on the track as he dominated the field in Birmingham, leaving Kenyan Paul Koech and American Bernard Lagat trailing as he ran a sub-four minute mile for the second half of the race, clocking 3:59.5.

“It (the row with Vernon) inspired me, I wanted to do it,” said Farah.

“Whatever’s happened has happened, we’ve got to move on, but at the same time I’m an athlete, that’s what I do best. I just have to keep running.”

Asked if he had a message for Vernon, Farah said: “No, at the end of the day whatever’s done is done. I just have to move on.

“I think it’s too soon to say anything right now. I’ve moved on and put that behind me. I want to keep running well.”

Vernon congratulated Farah on Twitter, saying: “Everything aside that was a cracking run @Mo-Farah. Congratulations on the new WR.”

Farah, who will skip next month’s European Indoor Championships, has five global track titles over 5,000m and 10,000m but had not set a world record until Saturday.

“Definitely, it’s about setting myself a goal and knowing what I want out of the year,” he said. “It’s two different things going for a world record or going for a championship.

“I shouldn’t get carried away, it’s only two miles indoors, but at the same time it would be nice to be able to do what I can do for 10k, if I can go close or break it.

“But I will never give up (on championships). I want to be able to know I collected as many medals as I could for my country.”

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Floyd Mayweather will fight Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas on 2 May in what promises to be the richest bout in the history of boxing.

American Mayweather, 37, and Filipino Pacquiao, 36, are considered to be the best two fighters of their generation.

Mayweather’s WBC and WBA welterweight titles and Pacquiao’s WBO belt will be on the line at the MGM Grand.

Mayweather is unbeaten in 47 professional fights; Pacquiao has 57 wins and five losses from 64 contests.

The fight is expected to generate as much as £162m ($250m). The most lucrative fight in history is thought to be Mayweather’s bout against Saul Alvarez in 2013, which made an estimated £97m.

Mayweather-Pacquiao is also expected to break the record for pay-per-view buys in the United States. The current record of 2.4 million was set when Mayweather fought fellow American Oscar de la Hoya in 2007.

Mayweather wrote on his webpage: “What the world has been waiting for has arrived. Mayweather vs Pacquiao on May 2, 2015 is a done deal.

“This will be the biggest event in the history of the sport. Boxing fans and sports fans around the world will witness greatness on May 2.”

Mayweather, whose unbeaten record stretches back to 1996, has won his past five bouts on points, most recently a rematch with Marcos Maidana in September.

British welterweight Amir Khan, who wants to fights Mayweather and also held talks with Pacquiao in January, said before the bout was announced that it is “not going to be what people expect”.

He told the Daily Mail on Thursday: “Four years ago it would have been a massive fight because both of them were at their peak. It might have gone past that now.

“It will be a good fight for a couple of rounds. I think it will go the distance but that Mayweather will win by unanimous decision.”